Tag Archives: Microsoft SQL

The year 2017 has brought on A LOT of change for the hosting community. A hosting company used to be an organization that hosted Exchange – fast forward to today and a service provider takes on a whole new meaning. In this article, we will take a look at defining a service provider and how it applies to licensing. Let’s play a little game called “Do they qualify” Have a question? Email info@splalicensing.com

An organization that provides or extends litigation software (that they leased from the publisher) to law firms and other legal entities who are not wholly owned by the organization providing the solution. Does this organization qualify for SPLA?

Yes. If you are an avid reader of splalciensing.com, you probably read my article on EMR Software The same holds true for any software (not just EMR) that runs on Microsoft technology that you do not own, but lease from a third-party. Remember “AS” If you are providing software AS a service that’s hosted from your datacenter environment, SPLA must be part of the equation. Why does this solution qualify for SPLA?

#1 they don’t own the software they are hosting

#2 they do not own the organization(s) who are consuming (using) the software for their benefit.

An organization who sells a product on a website to external users – do they qualify for SPLA?

No. Although they are selling something to consumers via the internet, the software used to deploy the solution benefits the e-commerce company, not the end-user. Where SPLA does fit is if the web company decides to host a website on behalf of another organization. The web company would fall under the SPLA rules. Who benefits from the access is a key question to ask yourself. Second question – is the access used to run their business or my own?

An organization who provides SharePoint to end users to share information. Do they qualify?

No. Simply sharing information does not qualify. If the organization was hosting SharePoint on behalf of another organization, that’s SPLA.

A company hosts Exchange on behalf of another organization but does not charge for this access. Does this qualify for SPLA?

Yes. Microsoft doesn’t care how much money you make from the solution. The question remains – are you providing this “as a service” for a third-party?

A company decides to use AWS as their datacenter provider to host an application they use internally. Do they need SPLA?

No. In this example, you are the end-user. AWS has a SPLA to cover all infrastructure products they host on your behalf. If you were to use AWS as a datacenter provider to host SharePoint to your end customers employees; you would pay AWS for Windows and SQL and report on your SPLA SharePoint SAL licenses.

I have 25 Linux machines that I host for my customers. Do I need SPLA?

No. You have 25 Linux machines. If you had 24 Linux machines and 1 Windows VM, you would have to license the host machine to cover that Windows VM through SPLA.

My reseller told me I didn’t need SPLA because the access qualifies for Self-Hosted. The auditors told me it does not qualify. Why?

All software used to deploy the solution has to be self-hosted eligible. I bet you are running an application that does not qualify as part of your solution. This would be SPLA. Secondly, if you did not buy the software with software assurance, that is out of compliant.

Last month, Microsoft held their annual Hosting Summit in Bellevue, WA. The good news is SPLA is not going away. Last quarter marked the 20th straight QTR of double digit growth for Microsoft SPLA. What is changing is the competitive landscape. Microsoft does not see SPLA partners as a competitor per se, they see SPLA as one of the biggest competitive advantages over other cloud offerings (IBM, AWS, Google, etc). They have over 30,000 SPLA partners worldwide, and they believe they can leverage those 30,000 partners to offer different cloud solutions.

Microsoft is betting big on what they define as “hybrid cloud” and that’s where they see service providers (SPLA) playing a significant part. Hybrid cloud is not just offloading workloads from on premise to another datacenter, it’s about leveraging different technologies to deliver solutions. As an example, late last year Microsoft offered solution called “Azure Stack” You can read about it here.

It’s the same APIs and same code as what Microsoft delivers through Azure. From a licensing perspective, Azure Stack is cheaper through SPLA (Windows) than it would be to pay through consumption. It will be available to offer this summer through the hardware manufacturers but you can download it now to test out.

The other big bet is SQL, and especially around the feature of stretch database. In laymen terms, it’s taking data that is not often consumed and offloading it to the cloud, reducing resources and consumption on servers locally. You can read more about stretch database from our friends at MSDN

All said, it was good to meet old friends and say hello to new ones at this event. If you were at the hosting summit and you did not have the chance to meet the infamous SPLA Man, email me at info@splalicensing.com. Would love to learn more about your offerings and how we can work together to make licensing simple.

Yes, it’s the talk of the town. “Windows 2016! Oh my! It’s moving to cores!!!” That part is true. What is NOT true is even when Windows 2016 is released, it doesn’t mean you have to license by core – you can still license by processor for all 2012 and earlier editions. The catch? Once your agreement expires and you sign a new SPLA after October 1st (when Windows 2016 is released) you must license by core regardless which version you are running.

So what does this mean to you? If I was a service provider that reports over 2k in Windows and SQL licenses, I might readjust when my SPLA expires to extend processor based licensing. Wait…What? You can readjust when my SPLA agreement expires? Sure. I’m SPLA Man. Anything is possible with SPLA Man.

If you have customers bringing licenses into your hosted environment you need to host it in a physical and dedicated environment. (nothing shared among other customers)

If you are reporting user licenses (SAL- Subscriber Access License) you need a license for each user that has access. For example, if you have 10 totals users in the month of May and only 4 actually use or access that software, you must license all 10. SPLA user licenses are similar to your cable bill; your cable provider is going to charge you regardless if you turn your TV on or not.

If you have customer owned licenses in your environment, you must keep all relevant documentation. This includes enrollment information, start date, end date, and who they bought the licenses from.

Renting out a PC make sure the PC has an OEM license preinstalled.

No virtualizing/streaming Windows desktop OS from a datacenter.

You can install your server on a customer premise, but do not install SPLA software on your customer’s server!

This is not bulletproof by any means. Use this as a guide when looking at your own environment. Look at it from the auditors eyes. What information would they need to verify that I am compliant? The SPUR (Service Provider Use Rights) is the best reference when it comes to Microsoft SPLA. You can download a copy here. If you have trouble sleeping at night; this is a must read.